After writing about unusual buildings in the Odd Travels feature last week, Kelly Kazek learned the rest of the story on the House of Prayer in Calera.

CALERA, Alabama – Rebecca Kendrick Gay can see her dad’s fingerprints all over her house – literally.

When Robert Kendrick retired from his long career as an Alabama State Trooper, he put his mind and hands to work creating oddly shaped buildings near his family’s Shelby County home, including the dome-shaped, rock-and-concrete house in which Rebecca raised her family.

“I love it,” she said. “I can see Dad’s handprint in it – his actual fingerprints where he smoothed the concrete.”

Robert Kendrick, who died in 1996, got the idea to build the two-story, 2,000-square-foot house after building a smaller dome as a public roadside chapel. His wife, Grace, who still lives nearby in the home they shared, said he decided to build the chapel in 1978 or 1979 during a spree of church break-ins.

“He decided to build a prayer house without a door and without anything in it that people could steal,” Mrs. Kendrick said. “He just wanted to do something for God.”

She and the couple’s daughters – Rebecca, Tammy and Elaine – assisted. “We all helped pick up rocks,” she said.

A friend, Clyde Carden, believed in Kendrick’s project and donated the land on which the prayer house is built. “They were good friends who wanted to glorify God,” Gay said.

Inside is an old millstone where people can kneel. Kendrick wrote The Lord’s Prayer in longhand on a piece of wood at its center but that has since been faded by time and weather, Gay said.

“The doorway is made deliberately low so you have to bow when you enter,” she said. “Then you walk right over and read the Lord’s Prayer.”

She said the family plans to restore the prayer at some point. Now when people enter the chapel, they often leave prayers on scraps of paper in the center of the grindstone.

After completing the chapel, Kendrick got the urge to try his hand at a larger project, Mrs. Kendrick said.

“It was really experimental. He said, ‘OK, I’m going to build a two-story house right here, then if that works out, I’m going to build a three-story house,’” she said. “People would come by and say, ‘What are you building?’ He’d say, ‘I’m building a UFO.’ Then he’d laugh and tell them he was experimenting.”

Kendrick died before beginning a three-story home. Gay said people often say her father must have been interesting but she thinks of him as “interested.”

Gay explained her dad, with a little help from his daughters but mostly from his wife, built the home by making a “cage” of rebar stuck in the ground, then bent and welded together at the top. That shape was covered in chicken wire and then “packed with concrete,” she said. The bottom story is covered in rocks, while the top is a smooth white dome.

Before Kendrick could finish the house, she had talked him into letting her move into it. Rebecca and her husband, Vernon Gay, raised their two sons, Nathan, 23, and Forrestt, 19, inside its rounded walls.

Gay said she and Vernon are continually adding to or refurbishing the home and not long ago had foam insulation sprayed on the exterior. Her husband shared his father-in-law’s vision for the unique home.

Gay said the boys grew to love the home, although as children, they didn’t understand why their home was different. “They’d say, ‘Mom, why can’t we live in a square house?’” Gay said with a laugh.

Join al.com reporter Kelly Kazek on her weekly journey through Alabama to record the region's quirky history, strange roadside attractions and tales of colorful characters. Call her at 256-701-0576 or find her on Facebook.